Is it the economy, stupid? The role of social versus economic factors in people’s support for hosting the Olympic Games: evidence from 12 democratic countries

ABSTRACT

Public referenda have gained momentum as a democratic tool to legitimize public mega projects such as hosting the Olympic Games. Interest groups in favour of hosting the Olympics therefore try to influence voters through public campaigns that primarily focus on economic benefits. However, recent studies find no or hardly any economic impact of hosting the Olympics, instead providing evidence for a positive social impact. This raises the question whether citizens consider economic or social factors when deciding on hosting the Olympics. Based on representative survey data from 12 countries, our results suggest that economic factors can influence voting behaviour, although the influence of social factors is stronger.

KEYWORDS:

• Bid
• campaigns
• host
• mega sport events
• Olympic Games
• public referenda

JEL CLASSIFICATIONS:

• L83
• R53
• Z28

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support for this research provided by CAMP BECKENBAUER.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ More recently, Boston (USA) and Hamburg (Germany) withdrew their plans to host the 2024 Summer Olympics amid a lack of public support. For the same reason, the European cities of Graubünden, Krakow, Munich, Oslo and Stockholm decided not to apply for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

² The countries were selected based on four criteria: (1) location in Europe or the USA, (2) democratic system according to the Democracy Index 2013 (The Economist Intelligence Unit 2014), (3) prior hosting aspiration as documented by an application for or hosting of the Olympics since 1994 and (4) gross domestic product in purchasing power parity in US Dollars for 2015.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CAMP BECKENBAUER.